Each fall brings change to the old and gray at the high school. Fresh and youthful faces fill the quadrangle, certain to carry a new light to the tiled hallways. Looming in front of these students are not only academic challenges and social pressures, but a suboptimal and exclusive sexual education curriculum.

Every freshman is required to take a half-credit Health and Fitness course, during which they spend time in the classroom learning about sexual health, drug use and personal relationships. The Town of Brookline and school administration may consider this curriculum progressive and comprehensive, but to us, the evidence is lacking. The high school needs to change, and fast.

The striking inconsistency between individual Health and Fitness courses demonstrates our need for reform. My freshman year, our class never had a “self-defense” course while others did. No class at the high school is perfectly consistent, and many vary wildly among teachers, but none creates as wide a gap as the Health and Fitness classes.

Imagine never learning about Reconstruction in U.S. History or the Ideal Gas Law in Chemistry. Without a uniform curriculum, we cannot trust that every student will receive the same quality of education. Our health classes must be standardized.

The high school uses the Planned Parenthood-sponsored, Get Real: Comprehensive Sex Education That Works curriculum. On its website, Get Real boasts that “among students who received Get Real, 16 percent fewer boys and 15 percent fewer girls had sex compared to their peers who did not take Get Real.” Although it claims to be a “comprehensive” sexual education program, our current curriculum is taught with a focus on reducing sex amongst teens.

Students at the high school deserve an education that respects our choices as individuals and creates an environment for us to make those choices safely. We deserve an education that promotes safe and consensual sex, de-stigmatizes sex (especially amongst LGBTQ youth) and provides resources for sexually active young people.

So what does accessible, comprehensive sex education mean? Specifically, our curriculum should emphasize healthy relationships as a foundation for young people in our school. Our curriculum should make clear what healthy relationships look like, and teach students to understand that abuse is not always straight-up and visible. The curriculum should teach us how to foster healthy, supportive relationships with teachers, parents, romantic partners and colleagues while providing safe spaces and allies who will support people in abusive or unhealthy relationships.

Without this as a common ground, it becomes impossible to talk about sex, STIs and drug and alcohol use. Instead of a fear-based, abstinence-centered curriculum, we need one that will create mutual respect and trust between the members of our community, and provide students with adults and resources they can put their faith in.

As students, we should expect to go to class knowing that we will receive accurate and unbiased information. As people, we should expect to have our choices respected by our peers and our teachers. As members of the Brookline community, we should be able to stand up and say, “we want change.”

The high school must provide medically accurate, non-judgmental, consent-based sexual education, not sex negative, LGBTQ exclusive, stripped-down information under the pseudo-liberal “comprehensive” file. The high school needs to support and protect its students, regardless of any student’s sexual history. Bureaucracy and administration too often obstruct the reality that this is our education, not our teachers’, not our parents’ and not our administrators’. We deserve, we demand and we expect a voice in what we learn; when it comes to sex education, we deserve change.

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